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He’s thrilled to be headed to WBS, as he has been at home the last few weeks, waiting for a trade. He didn’t say what went wrong in Providence after he was sent down by Boston last month, but it was pretty clear that relationship soured.

It’s a low-risk acquisition — future considerations went to Boston in return — so what’s not to like? Bring him in, see how he fits in with your team and go from there.

There’s no question he adds some toughness to the lineup. He’s a legit top-of-the-line heavyweight, 6-foot-4, 225 pounds with more than 100 pro fights, many against big-time opponents.

It’s impossible to guess about the ramifications of this move without knowing how Todd Richards plans to use Brookbank. Forward or defense? (He’s played both as a pro.) Limited ice time to bring some toughness or regular shift? Does the move cut into Dennis Bonvie’s ice time? Does it spell the end of Ryan Glenn’s tenure with the team? Does it mean Alain Nasreddine isn’t coming back from Pittsburgh for a while? Is some other kind of move in the works? I don’t think he is a replacement for Wade Skolney, because Skolney said today he could be back in the lineup by this weekend.

In tomorrow’s paper, Wade Skolney discusses his return to the lineup, which could come as soon as Friday.

Later this week, a feature on Stephen Dixon, who has both been used as a shutdown center and given more power play time in the last few games. He’ll probably reprise the shutdown role this weekend when the Penguins host Norfolk on Saturday. The Admirals top line of Brandon Bochenski-Martin St. Pierre-Troy Brouwer is 4-5-8 in the AHL scoring race.

On Sunday, a collection of short Christmas memories from various Penguins. Dixon on Christmas in the Maritimes. Tim Wallace on Christmas in Alaska. Jeff Deslauriers on Christmas in Quebec. That sort of thing.

A couple of notes on former Penguins in Europe.

Defenseman Chris Kelleher tore his MCL and is out for the year. From what I was told, he was awaiting word from his club, Linkoping, about whether he should stick around in Sweden or head home.

Forward Billy Tibbetts, according to the Boston Globe, has signed with HPK in the Finnish Elite League. Good luck to HPK with that. Good luck to the entire country of Finland, in fact.

Also, this is an old note, but I don’t think I ever mentioned it here. Former Penguins center Krys Kolanos left the Grand Rapids Griffins after scoring 12 points in 17 games to head over to Switzerland.

Finally, a couple of comments on the comments.

To Thememan, I can’t speak for anyone else, but my take on the Brandon Sugden situation is that he wasn’t willing to suffer through the life of a tough guy in pro hockey today — the scratches, the infrequent shifts, the lack of an actual line to skate on due to the 17-skater rule. Dennis Bonvie is dealing with the same issues. He’s just more willing than Sugden to grit his teeth and live with it.

As far as his fighting ability, I considered Sugden the AHL heavyweight champ at the time of his “retirement.” Any big fans of the fight game want to nominate a No. 1 contender to the belt with Sugden gone? I’d love to hear some names. Post a comment or email me.

Also, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of that Quebec semi-pro league. After watching the Hockey Gladiators tournament last summer, I discovered that as much as I enjoy a good scrap, I only like it in the context of a hockey game. I like a fight to have some hockey-related purpose, whether it’s settling a score, sending a message of intimidation or even just trying to fire up the crowd or the boys on the bench. In that Quebec league, they just fight to entertain the fans. That’s fine, but it gets a little old.

To Bobby, I think Philly is capable of doing that goaltender shuffle because the bottom three guys on the five-deep don’t have to clear waivers. That’s pretty rare. That’s why I don’t think you’ll see it more often.

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s 3-2 win at Syracuse today in a nutshell: The Penguins weren’t particularly sharp, playing on the road at the tail end of three games in three nights, but they were the beneficiaries of some shaky goaltending by Tomas Popperle and did enough to win.

Much of the game story focuses on Andrew Penner because he beat his old team in his old building. I used a line in the story about Penner looking like Georges Vezina compared to Popperle. I looked up Vezina on hockeydb.com to make sure I spelled Georges right, and was surprised to see he only played four mostly undistinguished years in Montreal in his pro career.

It made me wonder why the NHL’s goalie of the year trophy is named after this guy.

Thanks to our friends at Wikipedia, I found out. Vezina was the first NHL goalie to record a shutout and the first NHL goalie to record an assist before dying tragically at age 39 due to tuberculosis. And considering the fact that the Canadiens owners were the ones who bought the trophy to give to the league’s best goalie, it makes sense that it is named after Vezina.

And he was nicknamed the Chicoutimi Cucumber, which is pretty cool.

OK, tangent over. Here’s an interesting stat. The Penguins have 20 wins and the best record in the league with 44 points. Their goalies have identical records to get them there (10-3-1).

To John, I asked coach Todd Richards what the deal is with Wade Skolney. Ever vague when discussing injuries, Richards said he hopes Skolney can be back by next weekend. That’s all I know about it.

Finally, I was shocked to see Philly beat Toronto 5-3 today. The Marlies were coming off wins at WBS and at Hershey, while the Phantoms were absolutely awful Saturday night against the Penguins. A look at the box score, however, showed that the Phantoms got David Printz (plus-2), Triston Grant (2 goals) and Petr Nedved (3 assists) back for the game, giving them a way better lineup than they dressed the night before. So that explains that.

I will now go root for Larry Johnson to save me from sure fantasy football playoff elimination. Wish me luck.

Hard to really get a feel for how well the Penguins played in a 7-1 win over Philadelphia tonight, as the Phantoms dressed a patchwork lineup with 11 AHL rookies, probably the worst lineup I’ve ever seen them use.

What it did was give some individual Penguins a chance to build some confidence after a brutal showing last night against Toronto. Noah Welch, who was on the ice for five of Toronto’s six goals, had a goal and an assist. Micki Dupont had three points and was a plus-4. Andrew Penner won his second game in a row, bouncing back after two straight bad starts.

Daniel Carcillo had an assist, was a plus-2 and stayed out of trouble a night after being benched for taking a misconduct for arguing a call. Here’s a Carcillo quote on the matter. “I kind of just lost it and said a few things to the ref. It’s my own fault. I was trying to go misconduct-free for the whole year, but that’s not going to happen now. Coach Richards talked to me before the (Philly) game. He said I was playing well and it was one minor setback, not to let it affect my game tonight. I think I went out there and played a pretty good game.”

Richards was also asked for his thoughts on Alain Nasreddine scoring his first NHL goal, in his 795th pro game, in his hometown of Montreal. The quote: “You could see the excitement on his face. He was like a little kid. That’s awesome when you see something like that. There are some things that happen as a coach that you feel really good about, and one was seeing Alain Nasreddine score.”

Elsewhere, it now looks like tomorrow’s trip to Syracuse won’t be one of the last for the Penguins. The Crunch and Onondaga County have worked out a five-year lease agreement. Lindsay Kramer’s blog has details.

This was probably the most animated coach Todd Richards has been after a game, and for good reason. The Penguins lost, 6-5 in overtime to the Toronto Marlies, on a play that should never, ever happen.

Up 5-4 with 2:35 left, the Penguins went on a power play. They should have moved the puck around the perimeter, killed time, and left the Marlies with 35 seconds to try to tie the score. Instead, Toronto somehow ends up with a 3-on-2 and scores shorthanded with 1:15 left. You could go a whole season and never see that again, a shorthanded goal with 75 seconds left that ties a game.

Here’s a quote from Richards from the game story: “You go out there with two and half minutes to go in the game and you have a power play, the only thing you have to think about – the only thing – is to be responsible. And we had guys out there that weren’t responsible. I guess that’s my fault. I put them out there.”

That’s not really Richards’ fault. The blame belongs to the players. But if you want to blame Richards for something, blame him for benching his hottest goal scorer, Daniel Carcillo, for pretty much the last two periods of the game. Carcillo picked up a misconduct for arguing a call in the second period. He was wrong, no doubt. Should have kept his mouth shut. But weakening your lineup so you can teach a player a lesson is a risky proposition.

It would be easy to forget because of the way the game ended, but Connor James scored twice and had at least two other great scoring chances. He credited his cousin, who came in from Red Deer for a visit with good luck cookies in tow. He also said he was on the ice for three goals against, which takes some of the fun out of a two-goal game.

The big news in Pittsburgh today was Jim Balsille’s decision to pull out of his bid to buy the parent club. I’m not really in the loop on this issue, but I have been told this wasn’t as big a shock for those in the know as it was for the average fan. Apparently, the NHL and Balsille have been at odds for a few days now.

What it boils down to, as far as I can tell, is this: Balsille wanted to have the right to decide whether Plan B was acceptable or not. The NHL wants to be the one making that call. The result was an impasse that couldn’t be resolved.

To me, this news makes it much more likely the Penguins stay in Pittsburgh, regardless of who gets the slots license this week. If any prospective owner is planning to buy the team and then move it, he found out today that he’s going to have to battle the NHL to do so.

As it turns out, Daniel Carcillo’s five-game goal-scoring streak is indeed tied for the longest in the regular season in team history. Thanks to the Penguins PR department, here is a list of the five-game goal streaks tied for the top spot:

Tom Kostopoulos (11/2-11, 2001)

Kris Beech (2/7-15, 2003)

Matt Murley (3/19-29, 2003)

Tomas Surovy (10/8-24, 2003)

Michel Ouellet (12/5-15, 2005)

Erik Christensen (10/21-29, 2005)

Daniel Carcillo (11/29-present)

I was also thinking about the all-star game today. I’ll do a full story on this topic as we get closer to the selection date, but I think Tom Gilbert and Jonathan Filewich are the top WBS candidates at this point. Rob Schremp is a contender too. He’s having a decent year, but more importantly, the league would love the publicity he would undoubtedly bring to the skills competition. A Schremp shootout attempt would spice that event up tremendously.

The John LeClair situation has finally reached its conclusion, as reports out of Pittsburgh say the Penguins put the veteran winger on unconditional waivers for the purpose of giving him his release. I frankly didn’t know unconditional waivers even existed in the new CBA, but you live and learn. There was never any serious consideration of LeClair actually reporting to the minors, but if WBS made a No. 7 LeClair jersey anyway, how much do you think they could get for it on ebay?

To Roy36Cairns, I have to go into the locker room and talk to these guys every day. You want me to rank them by who’s tougher? They could all crush my head like a bug. I will say this. Look at their career fight cards on dropyourgloves.com. Bonvie, McNeill and Carkner are top-of-the-line heavyweights, fighting the biggest and baddest opponents. I would say Skolney is a light-heavyweight. He can take on the elite tough guys and does from time to time, but I think he would prefer not to do it game in and game out. Carcillo and Stone are middleweights. Carcillo, because of the way he plays, might have to fight heavyweights now and then because he ticked them off, but usually he squares off with other pests. Stone is actually a fun fighter to watch. He only goes when he has a really good reason, but once he drops the gloves, he punches with bad intent.

First, kinks in the blog registration process have been worked out. Anyone who wants to comment can sign up, promptly receive a confirmation code via email and join the conversation.

Second, I was trying to look up some stats on Daniel Carcillo’s current five-game goal-scoring streak. I think it’s tied for the longest in the regular season in team history with Erik Christensen (Oct. 21-29, 2005). Milan Kraft did have a six-gamer in the 2001 playoffs, however.

Billy Tibbetts has the longest points streak, a 15-gamer in 2000. Dennis Bonvie set a team record with penalty minutes in 17 straight games last year. That one might stand for a while.

I asked Todd Richards if he had kept an eye on Alain Nasreddine on television while the captain’s up in Pittsburgh. Here’s what he said: “He’s playing too good (laughs). No, it’s great for him. You love to see good guys do well. Hopefully he can keep it up. He played 21 minutes vs. Washington and he was playing in a lot of key situations, especially at the end of the game. That tells me right there that they have a lot of faith and a lot of trust in him. Having said that, I think that means he’ll be there for a while.”

Working on a story about Grant McNeill for tomorrow’s paper, I discovered that he has an impressive fight card. Derek Boogaard (three times), Colton Orr, Mike Sgroi, Matt Carkner, Chris Simon, Shawn Thornton, Brandon Sugden, Eric Boulton, Peter Worrell. Big time heavyweights. His one NHL fight was with Chris Simon. Check it out on You Tube. It’s an amazing fight. McNeill takes a shot, then gets up and delivers two solid blows. Shows a lot about his drive.

To Bobby, I apologize for all the math in the Melichar entry. Calculus 101 was what made me a journalism major in the first place, but sometimes that stuff pops up again.

To Kingpen, I have seen Alex Rouleau’s numbers with Phoenix of the ECHL, 20 points in 24 games. I like the kid. I think the time he stood up to Binghamton’s Chris Neil was one of the most courageous things I’ve seen in eight years covering this league. But to start the year, he would have been eighth on the Penguins depth chart (behind Welch, Nasreddine, Carkner, DuPont, Skolney, Gilbert and Lannon), so it’s hard to say they gave up on him too soon. He’d be playing now, but that’s only after a bunch of injuries and call-ups.

In the tradition of Jon Awe, the Penguins brought in another defenseman today, picking up Ryan Glenn after the Providence Bruins let him go.

Here’s what we know about Glenn. He has good size (6-2, 209) and some offensive skill. He went to St. Lawrence, as did Pittsburgh GM Ray Shero, but the more important connection, I would bet, is that he played three games for Milwaukee (and assistant coach Todd Richards) last season. Glenn has been an AHL gun for hire so far as a pro, making his home base with the Charlotte Checkers of the ECHL and getting called up for stints with Hartford (11 games), Milwaukee (3), Syracuse (3), Lowell (28) and Providence (15).

Elsewhere, while watching the Pittsburgh-Washington game last night, it seemed like every time a Penguin scored a goal, he was immediately hugging Alain Nasreddine. He had a big game, playing 21 minutes, going plus-3 and blocking five shots. I think it’s safe to say his call-up is going well so far.

Nasreddine’s stat line also got me thinking about the art of blocking shots. I’ll have a story on it for Sunday’s paper. I don’t want to give away the best part of that story, so let’s just say that when assistant coach Dan Bylsma teaches the Penguins about blocking shots, he knows, personally and painfully, what he’s talking about.

Now to the In Defense of Josef Melichar note I hinted at last night. Bear with me if it gets a little bit too technical. It is stat heavy.

Gabriel Desjardins has a Web site devoted to serious analysis of hockey statistics, the kind of sabermetric study previously only done in baseball.

One of the most interesting stats there is an advanced plus-minus rating. It takes a players’ plus-minus rating, then compares it to his team’s plus-minus rating when he’s not on the ice.

A good example for the stat is Sidney Crosby. For every 60 minutes Crosby is on the ice, the Penguins score 2.27 more goals than they allow. For every 60 minutes he is not on the ice, the Penguins give up 0.78 more goals than they score. That gives Crosby an advanced plus-minus rating of +3.04, which is seventh-best in the league. (Former Penguins captain Tom Kostopoulos, incidentlly, is a +3.62, third-best in the league. Impressive.)

Here’s where this ties in to Melichar. The Web site also has a quality of opponent stat. It studies who a player is on the ice against. So far this season, Melichar’s opponents have an average advanced plus-minus rating of 0.222. That’s the largest figure for any defenseman in the league.

So here’s the bottom line. Josef Melichar is playing the toughest minutes of any defenseman in the league. It leads you to believe that he’s probably a better defenseman than he gets credit for.

Bonus points to 54Fighting, who correctly identified the Varsity Club reference. Perhaps I should be ashamed of myself for using a 1990s pro wrestling reference on the blog, but hey, why not?

I asked around about the John LeClair situation today. Coach Todd Richards said he honestly didn’t know what the future holds, and I believe him. Something has to give fairly soon. Ray Shero has been more than fair to LeClair (nice rhyme), but at some point, the Penguins will have to stop paying him to sit at home with his family and suspend him if he doesn’t report to WBS. He’s apparently not going to retire, as this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story states.

That said, I still can’t imagine LeClair showing up in the AHL. According to HockeyZonePlus.com, LeClair has made $48,362,035 since turning pro in 1991. It’s hard to think the $1 million or so he would forfeit by being suspended would amount to more than a drop in the bucket.

Besides, it’s really starting to look like the Flyers could use a warm body or two. They passed on LeClair when he was on waivers before because they didn’t want to crimp the ice time of their younger, developing prospects, but the situation has become more dire since then. Mike Richards and Geoff Sanderson are now out with abdominal injuries, joining Jeff Carter (broken ankle), Peter Forsberg (foot) and Sami Kapanen (back) on the injury report.

Now to the question of Matt Carkner as an NHL prospect. If you had asked me a month into the season, I would have said no. I thought he looked a step slow all through training camp and into the early part of the year. But he’s been playing much better lately, even putting together a five-game assist streak. He could easily fill an Eric Cairns-type role if that’s what Pittsburgh is looking for. He’s a physical, crease-clearing kind of presence. He’s a better skater than Cairns (obviously) but not as intimdating (obviously). And he’s right-handed.

Speaking of Carkner, I’ll have a story on a toys-for-tots kind of campaign he’s running this year in tomorrow’s paper. The Penguins have been lucky in the last eight years to have some players who really take pride in charity kind of activities. Off the top of my head, Toby Petersen, Matt Murley and Ryan Lannon all took it upon themselves to help out at various points.

In addition to the Carkner program, the Penguins will be visiting kids at Geisinger Children’s Hospital on Thursday and Lannon will be spearheading a blood drive at Convention Hall in Pittston on Jan. 3.

Meanwhile, I noticed the talk about the Penguins starting to see their season go down the tubes due to call-ups stopped dead after they beat the Chicago Wolves on Saturday. So we’ll save that discussion for another day. To figure out if the Penguins will get anyone back soon, let’s look at the Edmonton injury situation.

Ryan Smyth (broken thumb) is the closest to coming back. He has only said he’s out indefinitely, but some reports say one-to-two weeks, and he’s already been out a week. Recent projections also have Ales Hemsky (shoulder) coming back after Christmas and Ethan Moreau (shoulder) out until at least March.

Jean-Francois Jacques and Marc-Antoine Pouliot have seen their ice time dwindle lately and Alexei Mikhnov isn’t playing at all. So yeah, I guess I would expect an Oilers prospect or two sent back by the end of the month.

Some Internet reports, for what it’s worth, say Mikhnov is homesick and would consider returning to Russia rather than accepting an assignment to the minors should he be sent down again.

Finally, a bit of a teaser for Pittsburgh fans who read the blog. While surfing the Web the other night, I found a statistic that might make you think differently about Josef Melichar. I’ve already rambled enough for right now, so we’ll save that one for later in the week.

I’ve already heard a couple of people call this the game of the year for the Penguins, a convincing 5-3 victory over the high-flying Chicago Wolves. Hard to argue with that one.

The biggest helping of credit goes to the line of Daniel Carcillo, Stephen Dixon and Connor James, who were assigned to Chicago’s top line of Jason Krog, Darren Haydar and Brett Sterling, the 1-2-3 scorers in the league and the hottest trio the AHL has seen in years. Krog set up Haydar for a first period goal, but it was on the power play. Even strength, the Penguins’ checking line (Has there ever been a legit checking line here before?) owned the Wolves. Carcillo even had a breakaway goal even strength that made it 4-1 early in the second period.

A quote from Carcillo that will appear in the game story in tomorrow’s paper: “Coach Richards told us he wants us to be a shutdown line. I think we did a very good job of shutting them down tonight. They didn’t really have anything. Playing physical on those type of players, they shy away sometimes.”

The line of Joe Jensen, Kurtis McLean and Tim Wallace also had a big game, scoring twice. Jensen’s first AHL goal put the game away with 2:02 left. Nevermind the goal, I think it’s significant that Richards had the confidence in that trio to have them on the ice in a one-goal game with 2 minutes left.

I’m going to give the Jensen-McLean-Wallace line a nickname. I’m going to call them The Varsity Club, because they’re all fresh out of college. Bonus points to anyone who can identify the reference.

Plenty of other guys had big games. Andrew Penner rebounded from two bad starts to beat the league’s highest-scoring team. Jonathan Filewich, oh by the way, scored twice. Matt Carkner had an assist in his fifth straight game. Dennis Bonvie got the crowd going when he fought 6-foot-7, 230-pound Boris Valabik. All in all, Penguins fans got their money’s worth tonight.

One other thing I thought of watching tonight’s game. I think the Eastern Conference and Western Conference, or at least the East Division and West Division, play radically different games in today’s AHL. The East mucks it up and plays black-and-blue hockey, as the slogan goes. The West would prefer to run and gun. I know that’s probably oversimplifying things a bit, but that’s my impression.

Here’s a Penner quote on that subject: “If we were physical, I thought we could definitely wear them down. That’s not really their style. They definitely are run and gun up front. They want to play total offense. I think they want to go back and forth and trade opportunities, play the power play, see what happens. If you’re disciplined and play them hard and kind of smother them, they’re not as successful.”

Two personnel moves after the game as well. LW Arpad Mihaly was returned to the ECHL’s Reading Royals and D Jon Awe was sent back to the ECHL’s Gwinnett Gladiators. With the way Jensen and Wallace played, it’s hard to imagine Mihaly getting much ice time in the near future. Awe filled in well, but Wade Skolney should be healthy by next weekend and Grant McNeill looked like he can definitely be effective at this level.

There are a couple of other issues I’ve seen comments or emails about that we should discuss — the John LeClair situation, the thought of Carkner as NHL prospect, the impact of call-ups on the Penguins and whether they’re headed down the same path as last season — but I’ve already rambled too much. We’ll get into that tomorrow or Monday. If you have any thoughts on those topics — or on anything else – send them along.

A winner of first-place honors in the blogging category of the 2012 Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors awards, Penguins Insider was created to give local hockey fans an interactive, in-depth way to follow the team they so passionately support. The blog's author, beat writer Jonathan Bombulie, has been covering the team since its inception in 1999. Contact him at jbombulie@aol.com

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